I can hardly believe we're only one week into our small Cairo project—it already feels like I've been here for ages! To keep you all updated, I'll be posting a brief blog each week. For those who don't know me, I'm Donna. Originally from Leicestershire, UK, I’ve most recently been living on a small regenerative market garden in Hempnall, South Norfolk. I wear a few different hats: I'm a co-director of the market garden project, a clinical support specialist in the operating theatre, and I volunteer with various refugee initiatives. In the past, I’ve also taught English as a foreign language to children and university students across Spain, among other diverse pursuits. All of this led me to Cairo, where I’m now embarking on this exciting new chapter as a volunteer.

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So please respond to either (or both) of the paintings with your poetry, and decorate your handwritten poem with drawings or designs of your own. Please be under 18. And please make sure your poem is a maximum of 50 words. And remember, the painting is meant to set free your imagination, not tie it down. You can make your connection to the painting in the most surprising ways. The deadline for submissions is Friday 6th December 2024. Please send us a photo of your handwriiten poem to info@handsupproject.org

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Manuela Kelly, a Hands Up volunteer and friend, recently contacted Antonietta D'Introno, the editor of Peperoncino Rosso magazine, to introduce the Hands Up Project.

In a serendipitous twist, a teacher from Antonietta's hometown assigned her students to write about current events. Among them, 16-year-old Sara Yamoul crafted a poignant rap poem about the Israel-Palestine war. Her powerful poem was published in Peperoncino Rosso, spreading her message of peace to a wider audience.

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In a ‘picture dictation’ activity the teacher describes a drawing that the students cannot see, and the students draw what they understand from the description. It’s a classic ELT activity and in the Hands up Project we’ve been playing around with different online versions of it since the very beginnings of our work in Gaza. See for example this early example in Jabalia camp that we came to call ‘Reverse picture dictation’

Even now, despite everything, in our Stories Alive clubs and drama clubs in Gaza that we’ve had operating since May and before , our brilliant and dedicated teachers are finding new ways to use picture dictation to provide motivating and learning rich activities for children who have been immersed in total hell on earth for the past 10 months.

Ashraf, the coordinator of the whole Stories Alive programme in Gaza, was working with the story ‘The farmer who followed his dream’. Before telling the story he asked everyone to draw a picture of a farmer following his dream. This is a very loose and creative activity; It’s beauty lies in the fact that it’s completely open to interpretation and provides an opportunity for some interesting conversations when students describe their drawings afterwards. Here are some examples from his class.

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Being a mother and a teacher is amazing as it is time-consuming.  How on earth do you manage housework, teaching,  your own children’s school work and have a social life at the same time?

And that’s just in normal circumstances.  Nowadays, we are living in exceptional times with both students and teachers displaced.

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The ‘better together’ drama club in Jabalia isn’t up and running right now as the situation in Jabalia has been so appallingly difficult. Hanaa is doing her best to reestablish it and I’m sure she will as soon as she can. In the mean time we’d like to share a great activity that Hanaa had running through the sessions, before most people in Jabalia were displaced.

‘Teach us!’ isn’t strictly speaking a drama activity, but there are lots of links with drama of course. Those of us who teach will know that drama skills can help us to be better teachers, and teaching can also help us to be better at acting.

In Hanna’s activity the students took it in turns to teach the other students something, using English. We think it’s a brilliant idea - so motivating and personalised for everyone. Next time I teach a class of children I’ll try it out. Would it work in your context?

Here are two examples from the amazing students of the better together drama club.

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There were 3 things that really struck me when I watched this video of the incredible work of teacher Hussam M Al-Dalou; learning, community and play. 

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Experienced language teachers will know that it’s sometimes necessary to pre-teach some key vocabulary items before telling a story, or indeed doing any kind of listening activity with learners.

They will also know that this stage of a lesson can sometimes be rather dull and demotivating. So congratulations to Wafaa, one of our ‘Stories Alive’ teachers, for implementing this motivating, learner centred and learning rich game for pre-teaching some of the key vocabulary from the story of ‘Juha and the Meat’. And to do this in a tent for displaced people in Gaza, with everything that is happening there right now, deserves extra special appreciation of course. Thank you Wafaa and all the Stories Alive teachers in Gaza. You’re literally keeping hope alive for a generation of children!

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When I wrote ‘Stories Alive’ for British Council Palestine, I wanted to create some materials that could make learning fun through the telling of simple and familiar stories, whilst at the same time providing a framework for some quite controlled and memorable language learning activities.

I think I achieved these goals quite well and I’m proud of the fact that these materials have probably been used more widely than anything else I’ve ever written, especially in large classes all over Palestine.

But I’m most proud of the fact that the materials are being used right now in Gaza, against all the odds, by dedicated, resilient teachers who simply will not be stopped in their mission to provide quality English language teaching to children in Gaza.

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Emily Bryson did a wonderful workshop at last year’s Hands up Project conference, and in it she demonstrated a language learning activity which involved students drawing around their hands. From there we discovered that there were actually lots of activities involving hands that people knew and these resulted in a benefit book for Hands up, curated by Emily, but with contributions from all over the world, called Hands Up for Peace - Infinite Classroom Activities in your Hands!

Here’s Ashraf demonstrating one of the activities from the book with his ‘Stories Alive’ club in Gaza city.

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Everybody knows about October 7th and its aftermath. Few people know in detail much about the life in Gaza before that. So just in historical and sociological terms the plays are important. But to me plays are more than that – they are living voices. The voices in these plays are brightly alive – under immense pressure grabbing the chance to speak to the world out of the prison, the death cell, of Gaza.

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Not much need for tour guides in the Gaza strip you might say! Israel’s 17 year long blockade has meant that very few people from outside have made it there, and those that have have gone there for work rather than tourism.

But that hasn’t stopped the members of the ‘better together’ drama club in Jabalia, enlisting their imaginations and creating worlds to become tour guides for. This is very rich and enjoyable speaking activity and hats off to Hanaa for managing to do it in such conditions. Check it out in the video below.

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I wrote the British Council Palestine publication - Stories Alive because I wanted to create something that could draw on the motivating and memorable value of stories, whilst at the same time activating areas of grammar and vocabulary from the Palestinian English curriculum.

I wrote the British Council Palestine publication - Stories Alive because I wanted to create something that could draw on the motivating and memorable value of stories, whilst at the same time activating areas of grammar and vocabulary from the Palestinian English curriculum.

I’m proud of the fact that it’s probably been used more than anything else I’ve ever written, and I’m especially proud of the great work that Ashraf is doing with it now by providing a makeshift school for local children in his own home.

Here are just a few of the activities conducted by Ashraf after telling the story of ‘Jackal and crow’ from the Stories Alive materials.

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Can any of us really imagine what it’s like to a child in Gaza right now? To have lived through months of intensive, incessant bombing? To have had close friends and family members killed? To be constantly worried about when you’re next going to be able to eat or drink?

The logical result of this, of course, is that you grow up with deep hatred in your heart and that you want to seek vengeance.

But you could also grow up wanting to make art about your situation. as a step towards healing yourself and your community, and so that others around the world may be moved by your story.

Basim chose the second way. This is his story.

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Has there ever been an exhibition like this?

Children in a besieged enclave write poems inspired by two paintings. They enter them for a competition and the competition poems are made into a book, complete with the two paintings and illustrations by the poets for their poems.

Then the enclave is subject to what the (grown-up) poet Tamim Al-Barghouti describes like this: No city in Palestine has witnessed a massacre of this magnitude, probably, since 1099. He is referring to the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders, when the streets were ankle-deep in blood.

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Despite the dire conditions in Gaza right now, Hanaa Mansour has managed to set up and run the ‘Better together club’; an English drama club for children which meets every few days in Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Gaza. We’re all immensely proud of this and of you Hanaa! We’ll do everything we caa to support you with this.

It usually takes place every two days. Here are some images and videos of their session today in which the children played the ‘two truths and a lie’ game and created some still images.

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